Doppler Effect Build with Reaktor

The Doppler effect can be useful with modern music production, as well as sound design projects. In this lesson we share how to build your own doppler effect unit in Reaktor!

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For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Doppler effect, we took this quick explanation from Wikipedia as we felt it was a fairly concise description of something which can become difficult to explain without audio and visual aides. The Doppler effect (or Doppler shift), named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave (or other periodic event) for an observer moving relative to its source. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from an observer. The received frequency is higher (compared to the emitted frequency) during the approach, it is identical at the instant of passing by, and it is lower during the recession. Now that we have the explanation out of the way, we can begin to focus on how it can be used creatively in your own projects!

As someone who designs a lot of sounds and FX for films, games, etc I have become increasingly aware of opportunities to use this kind of effect on everyday sounds as well as musical instruments of varying types. Regardless of the music style you produce, you probably have plenty of things that you could use this effect on to create some very interesting results. It is an especially brilliant effect to place on sounds in deeper genres, like ambient, minimalistic and deepchord-like recordings. And if you incorporate found sounds and field recordings into your work, and you use Reaktor, this is a must have!